


Gold

by moonjump05



Category: Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, winterprincess, winterprincess week 2018, winterprincess week day 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-14 21:28:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15397845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonjump05/pseuds/moonjump05
Summary: Soulmate AU for winterprincess week 2018





	Gold

No one knew how soul marks worked. Where they came from, how they could cross the span of distance. They just were. Since time immortal various peoples across the earth looked at the hand print on the left arm and knew that somewhere out there was their other half.

They used to play games as kids- run up to as many people as you could and touch their arm, see if the dull ashen print would turn bright gold. Daring each other to touch an old woman, laughing as they chased classmates, even some commiserating shoulder pats when a sweetheart’s mark stubbornly stayed the same later on.

When the war broke out, the games turned serious. Suddenly marks were turning black as the newsreels reported causalities. Soulmates never found, never known.

His own had never changed, no matter how many girls had shyly touched his arm. He even got a few to try Steve out- their faces torn between relief and frustration after lifting their right hand to see the same gray mark as before.

So he shipped out. The war wasn’t going to end itself. Maybe he could help prevent more black marks.

He probably caused more.

The gritty reality of the warfront was nothing like what the papers said. Here the bright gold of a perfect mark was drowned in the vast sea of black and gray only brightened with red. The days and nights bled together into some dreary nightmare.

He was captured. Tortured. He would wonder in the lucid moments whether some soft eyed girl would have to watch her mark turn dark. Never knowing why.

(In another life a baby would be born with a black mark- a ruinous omen, a pitiful soul.)

But he was rescued, they were rescued and Steve asked him to keep fighting and he said yes. They weren’t soul mates but they were friends- brothers. It was an easy choice. He had time.

He and the rest of the commandos watched with morbid curiosity as Steve and the agent danced around each other. Neither one reaching out to cross that gap. There was a war he said, there was no chance he meant.

He fell and never found out.

A lifetime passed in a blur of screams and fighting. Like wading through a muck of dreams and reality mixed together, memories hazy and violence sharp. There were important things gone but when he tried to find them only pain came.

Only the icy rest brought some terrible peace, cold and biting into phantom limbs. He couldn’t sleep but he wasn’t truly awake.

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

He saved Steve in the end, perhaps to settle some long forgotten favor from before, but still walked away unsure and strangely empty. The hollow ache in his chest grew even as his memories returned, his gaze straying to the artificial metal arm sometimes. Not letting himself wonder.

There were more like him- winter soldiers lingering in wait. But instead only bright gold marks turning dull bronze as he ran a car off a lonely stretch of road mattered, a bloodied face and bruised neck barely remembered except in the eyes staring at him.

That gaze followed him halfway across the world.

So he did the only thing he could- go under and hope he could be fixed. Not for himself, not even for Steve who wouldn’t give up on him. But so no one else would end up like him.

(He saw the black mark on Steve’s arm. Asked if it happened while he was frozen. It didn’t.)

He woke up and saw her face.

For the first time in a long time he found some measure of peace. A hidden sanctuary. Welcoming and warm, surrounded by the vibrant colors of life. A balm. A home.

And Shuri.

She had fixed his mind. Taken the code words, cut out the triggers and commands. She had made him a new arm. Vibranium sleek and gleaming and so much stronger. She had given him a place, a goal. A hut not too near but not too far, rest and recover.

She had befriended him.

Polite conversation had slowly turned earnest, inside jokes and knowing smiles more and more common. Time spent with just the two of them, long after any official reason. A precious familiarity made all the more since she knew. She saw the dark memories, the grave deeds and still would greet him with a grin or tease him with a wink.

His gaze would drift to her arm sometimes. Even under the pink and turquoise sky, when the light turned the world gold tinted the hand print was a sickly gray. Unclaimed. Incomplete. Lacking.

Fist clenched he looked away.

Not everyone found their soul mate, and some lost theirs. Couples could be seen with black marks- or the dull faded bronze of a completed mark that lost its other half- but still would look into each other’s eyes with love. Defiance even, for those who saw their mark and didn’t care.

A soul mate wasn’t everything they argued- you could live and love without. His arm would ache sometimes, the lost phantom limb. The vibranium arm was a perfect replacement, yet still…

(Shuri had asked him, hesitantly, what his mark should have been. He didn’t know. He wanted…)

I didn’t matter since everything turned to ash.

On the other side of another war, his waking was bittersweet. He wondered if this is how those civilians felt, watching sons, brothers, lovers and friends go off to win but never come back. He mourned, he would always mourn- that was the way of grief, time healed but didn’t cure.

A gentle touch, a sympathetic smile.

However, the world didn’t end and there was still work to be done. Sam asked if he would join them, for once balancing his usual sarcastic tone with genuine request. He would be able to take up the mantle with respect, serve his homeland again.

He stayed. It was an easy choice.

The White Wolf hunted with the Black Panther. At first just with the king, but as time passed more often with Shuri as well. The partnership simply falling into an painless rhythm of fight and rescue and repeat. Life and death scenarios so much more uncomplicated.

At least he thought so. It was just another mission, some criminals trying to set up near the border. They flew in and routed them, the border tribe waiting to pick the scattered remnants. Shuri smiling as her armor melted away and she took the ship back up through the starry night sky.

They weren’t alone, some intrepid criminal had snuck aboard. It was chaos, then the stowaway was subdued but Shuri was hovering at the opened door- for a heartrending moment nothing but the wind and air beneath her.

He reached out.

And pulled her into his arms.

A breath, two. And he didn’t move away. Couldn’t, didn’t want to. That hollowness in his chest filled with her. Soft and trusting and not moving away either.

She looked up, dark gaze piercing his own. Opening her mouth to say something, but for once words seemed to fail her. Failed him too as he noticed where he had gripped her, one vibranium hand on her upper arm and her gray mark covered by his flesh and blood one.

He stared at it, that singular point that the whole universe seemed to spin around. Underneath his hand, what would be there? Could he pull away and see that nothing changed?

When everything had changed?

He didn’t want to. To take that final step and watch as his hopes were destroyed. Because they would, there was no chance-

Shuri smiled, gentle and sure as she always was and lifted his hand away. Held it in her own.

Her mark was gold.

(Later on, afterwards. Shuri modified his vibranium arm with her own hand print in gold.)

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Saw this prompt and had to write for it! Kinda did my own take on the soulmate AU, since some of the usual tropes are strange to me (it's a SOUL mark, why would it only appear when your soulmate is born???) Tried to distill some of my prose by leaving out dialogue almost completely. Yes, it is a whole fic of my favorite sentence fragments and overuse of commas. Hopefully it reads well.


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